Bid to slash bureaucrat's medical bill

“We’re talking with insurance companies about how they could participate in a healthcare scheme for civil servants,” Rangsan Srivorasat , director-general of the Comptroller-General’s Department, said last week.
He said he wants the insurance firms to take all the risks and the government would pay them a lump-sum premium each year.
The government has allocated Bt62 billion to cover medical expenses in the fiscal 2012 budget bill pending in Parliament.
The department has succeeded in curbing the rising cost of medical care. The cost was climbing up about 10 per cent per year, but in the 2010 fiscal year, which ended on September 30, it was Bt62 billion, almost unchanged from the previous year.
The department had imposed many measures such as requiring hospitals to give patients generic instead of original medicines, leading to better cost control.
“If insurance firms agree to provide protection for both civil servants and their families, we may drive the cost of medical care to Bt50 billion,” he said.
The other option is introducing a co-payment requirement. Officials would have to help pay some of the cost, for example, 20 per cent. Most civil servants, however, would not accept this condition.
“But we may apply it to new recruits,” he said.
The department also has asked the Thailand Development Research Institute to study how to reform the civil service healthcare scheme.
Rangsan, however, said he did not agree with Ammar Siamwalla, a noted economist at the institute, who proposed the consolidation of the country’s fragmented healthcare system, which now comprises many schemes, including the Social Security Fund for employees of companies and the universal health scheme covering those who been left out of other schemes.
State employees would not accept a new system that would reduce the benefits they are currently enjoying, he added.
The healthcare scheme for state employees is considered more generous than the others.